Has the “American contractor killed” in Iraq whose death prompted the current occupant of the Oval Office - a/k/a dt - to stage attacks in Iraq been identified? If an incident predicates U.S. military action, we should have as many details as possible.
I have yet to see that the person has been identified.
First, was an “American contractor” even killed? The USA has a troublesome track record as to “incidents” upon which we predicate military attacks. In 1964 the Tonkin Gulf incident formed the basis for our escalation of military in Vietnam.
“Long before the [Vietnam] war was over, it was discovered that the Gulf of Tonkin incident as portrayed by the [Johnson] administration was a fraud.” Cawthorne, “Vietnam: A War Lost and Won,” 2017, p. 38. Over 60,000 American military personnel and hundreds of thousands of Southeast Asians died.
Fraud-induced military actions staged by the U.S. have occurred more recently and in Iraq. We never found any “weapons of mass destruction.” Over 4,000 U.S. military personnel have died in Iraq. The number of Iraqi civilians dead ranges from 151,000 to over a million.
We need to know if there was “an American contractor killed.” As Lincoln said: “Let the people know the facts and the country will be safe.” dt lies many times during any given day. Did he lie about this death?
Second, if there was an “American contractor killed,” we need to know what the nature of the “contract” was. This is not a macabre request. In both contemporary parlance and the context of military operations, a “contractor” many times is a mercenary.
Blackwater - the private firm run Erik Prince, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s brother - has contracts in Iraq & its ex-U.S. military people are on the ground there. If a mercenary is killed, we have a right to know under what circumstances the person was there and the person’s work.
A mercenary assumes risk in her or his job. If this person’s work involved enhanced interrogation techniques - i.e., torture; part of what Blackwater did in years past - then many Americans would have problems with risking war to avenge the death of such a “contractor.”
Finally, if dt has lied about this incident so that he can rationalize a war to distract people from the ongoing negative aspects of what could be the end days of dt’s stay at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, then we need to know.
If members of Congress do not act to remove dt from office, then the voters will - and will remove those in Congress who refuse to act.
We also need to remove our military from Iraq. The government is in power there as a result of our actions. If the Iraqi government tells the USA to leave, we must leave. It would be better for our troops to leave before being shown to the door.